This blog contains ideas and comments from my own journey as an educator in the 21st century. Opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect opinions and policies of my employer. Your comments, ideas and suggestions are always welcome!

04 November 2012

Note: I wrote this post last week for a media literacy class that I'm taking. It is more of a reflective piece on ed tech than a media literacy piece.

This past weekend (October 26-27), I attended the annual Computer Using
Educators (CUE) conference in American Canyon. About 1,000 teachers from all
over California gathered at American Canyon High School to geek out and share
all things tech. Many of the people I admire in Ed Tech were there. At any
rate, all of the sessions I attended were good, but I thought I would share a
few things that struck me.

First, techie teachers are, overall, willing to share what
they know and what they have created. All of the presenters provided links to
their presentation materials and suggested that participants use the material, change
it, and pass it on. Those presenters who were also classroom teachers, they
expected to see their students engaging in the same type of activity in the
classroom.

Second, many of the presenters seem to be versed in Ed Tech
theory and share the research and theory that drives their own practice. I did
not notice that behavior last year. It was kind of cool to hear other teachers
talk about Henry Jenkins. It also lent those presentations a bit more
credibility since they were situated in both practice and theory.

I also noticed that, since is this a K-12 focused
conference, many of the sessions were either about technology and the Common
Core State Standards (CCSS) or CCSS was mentioned at some point in the
presentation even if the presenter is a private school educator. Frequently,
presenters discussed specific tools that could be used to help students achieve
under CCSS. There are many shifts that must take place in the classroom as the
new standards are implemented and it makes teachers nervous. Hopefully,
teachers will be able to take time to deliberately plan for the changes.

To close out this post, I thought I would include some of
the tools and resources recommended in some of the sessions I attended:

Google Art
Project: Somehow I missed this. GIGApixel photos from museums around the
world bring the art to your students. It’s almost as good as being there.

Archive.org: Visit this
site to find all kinds of video and other documents for classroom use. Much of
it is in the public domain. This would be great if students were creating
re-mixed videos.

Adventures
of the Three Cyberpigs: This is a game to help teach kids about online
safety. The presenter and audience members who have seen the game say that it’s
fun. Interestingly, they all said to just search Cyberpig and it would be the
first link. It’s not. It’s the third or fourth link in the search.

Google Alerts:
Jerome Berg, of Google Lit Trips
fame, suggested that teachers create Google Alerts for subjects the class is
studying. When he taught high school English, he would set up alerts for GIANTS WIN! no, wait. Sorry. He’d set up
alerts for Ann Frank when his students read “Diary of a Young Girl.” Her name
showed up in the news somewhere in the world nearly every day. Alerts can help
you show how your subject is relevant in the modern world.